#411: How To Talk To A CEO (hint: NOT like a baby) w/ Brett Schklar
Brett Schklar is the founder and CEO of GROW Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focusing on growth for emerging tech companies and any SMB needed chief marketing officer placement.
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Cold Sweat Equity Podcasting Streaming Show. 0:00
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What’s the best way to find Brett? 2:05
Introducing brett sklar and his company, grow powerful.
What a fractional CMO is.
What fractional cmos are and how they work.
Why fractional cmo is cheaper.
What’s the average lifespan of an agency? 6:50
The average lifespan of a CMO is 18 months.
Brett is transparent about his pipeline.
People tend to repeat the same behaviors.
Going in-house full time as a chief marketing officer.
The advantage of having a fractional CMO or advisor –. 11:35
Having a couple of clients going on at a time for strategy.
Having a fractional CMO.
How to write a chat gpt prompt.
Advice to 13 year old self.
Why Google is losing the game so quickly. 16:20
Raising kids in tball.
Why Google is losing the game so quickly.
Google is rebranding chatgbt as a search engine.
Google is cracking down on ad-based content.
The free version has gone up. The paid version has not. 19:29
How to talk to ceos.
How to approach ceos in a positive light.
Self-selecting marketing haters, and how to overcome them.
Marketing is one of 20 things going on.
How do we identify the type of ceo and how do we create a language? 23:06
Making it simple and bite-sized for the CEO.
The four types of ceos out there.
Three types of ceos, sales-driven, operations-driven and sales-oriented.
How to identify the right CEO.
What do you do when the ceo is a bit whipped in getting ideas from the wife? 28:00
Getting ideas from the boss.
Facebook to kids is like hooking up with an algo.
Building a story-based presentation for an enterprise sales client.
Building a circle of trust.
How do you handle bad ideas from clients? 32:45
How to handle bad ideas from clients.
The random acts of marketing.
The sopranos-style approach to dealing with ideas.
How to frame the question of getting opinions.
Brett Schklar's calls-to-action
linkedin.com/company/growpowerful
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Transcription by Otter.ai - Otter referral link https://otter.ai/referrals/AVPIT85N
Law Smith 0:00
sweat equity podcasting streaming show. Hey, hey, it's man rush over in rush. Okay. Well, we're gonna let everybody know we're the number one comedy business podcast in the world. Thank you Mr. Flair. And listen to us on iTunes, Apple podcast Spotify, anywhere podcasts are found. We're probably there are only fans page got shut down for some reason. But I tried to get us on there. Well, look, we just meet people we meet, we go fishing, where the fish are. What
Eric Readinger 0:37
are you talking about? That is happening that 30 seconds ago. Ooh. But if you're talking like,
Law Smith 0:45
what am I edible, ladies and gentlemen, we're talking about candy. Or my nicotine gum. You're going to be our BFF subscribe to the pod rate us five star write a little review and share this show with a family friend, a loved one co worker stranger dog, dog fish. You know, we're the number one dog podcast just came out Apple iTunes. Not a big deal. If you want a website, get your 30 Get your free trial with the link in our description helps out the show helps you out. And you should have a website. Let's get it going. cold sweat equity
listening to the sweat equity podcast. We're running. That's how we roll. We keep everybody efficient. Well, I mean,
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 2:05
I didn't even get started yet. Oh shit.
Law Smith 2:07
What do you drink? Yeah,
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 2:10
I need to get started. And I have to listen to some of your podcasts. This is like to listen to some of your podcasts or watch some of your videos. I figured I couldn't go for classic glass. So I got a special like moonshine style glass just for this
Eric Readinger 2:25
show. Oh, man. See,
Law Smith 2:27
that's that's the marketing prowess. You're pushing the brand message of yourself. Like
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 2:34
why don't your audience why don't you let
Law Smith 2:36
everybody know where to find you? What's the best way you know? Any plugs? who you are? Who are you? We let the guests do it because it's better than me stumbling through it, even though I do know you.
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 2:53
Well, yeah, I'd like to start off by saying when I was young, I was born. And then now my name is Brett Sklar rhymes with scar. So people who know me are scarred for life. Good way to remember it. I run an organization, an amazing group of people called Grow powerful. We've assembled the greatest marketing and growth minds. And we deliver them to customers as fractional or interim or II CMOS. That's it. Yeah, we help companies grow.
Law Smith 3:27
And I'm on the roster. Hopefully, Eric might be in the mix as well. Yeah, as you're adding more. More like it's an interesting one. Actually. I want to make sure we get this out of the way. Can you explain what a fractional CMO is what the interim CMO?
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 3:46
Yeah, so basically, let me let me explain it this way. It sucks to be a chief marketing officer or head of marketing and accompany your crapped on all the time. If it's b2b, the salespeople are always trying to run that bus over you as many times as possible until your head squashes like Vampire shares. So and and wait, there's more. A fractional chief marketing officer or sorry, actually, a chief marketing officer has an average lifespan. And I know more about the b2b world than I know about the consumer world. But the average lifespan of a chief marketing officer is about 18 months. So it's kind of a temp job anyway, think about it. So what we do is we brought some of the most greatest, most amazing marketing minds like law together under an organization or collective and we help them out. We deliver them to clients on a one day, two day, three day a week basis as fractional or part time or even interim chief marketing officers and everybody wins CMOS, we are a society of add individuals, right? We always like right, sharing cool new things. And working for one company peddling one product is kind of well, it's boring What are your party should do it your podcast the other day, and you got into the big love territory, you know, where it's like polygamy and multiple wives and somebody was doing 100 customers, and you're like, it'd be like having 100 wives. And we as marketers, we are not marketing, monogamous stick, we like to do multiple things. And so I have an organization that goes out and finds gigs. And our fractional CMOS, or what we call ICOs will usually have anywhere between one two or three gigs at any given time. And it gives a lot of variety, it gives a lot of spice, it gives a lot of fresh ideas. And then people can cross pollinate that across multiple clients have an idea that works here, and you can take it there, et cetera, et cetera, the companies that we work with win, because they're able to get, you know, I hate when people say, Oh, get a fractional CMO, because it's cheaper. Well, that's wrong. Here's why. And what we deliver our fractional CMOS, who have been battle tested, proven, have done it over and over again, as the chief marketing officer have been in board of directors meeting having to explain or getting the opportunity to explain what marketing is all about. So we're able to deliver supercharged, marketing leadership to companies who may not be able to get that because they're smaller. And that's what we deliver.
Law Smith 6:50
Yeah. It's, well, we don't call the clients John's, that as you pimp us out. That call back that I've been sitting on. Sitting on that way. I'm trying not to interrupt our guests as much.
Eric Readinger 7:07
I wanted to interrupt when you're talking about the average lifespan, I thought you're gonna tell us when we're gonna die. Yeah, like, what is it? 5556 We're all gonna, we're all gonna die. Turns out it's 18 months. Well, we've way outlived it.
Law Smith 7:19
I went in house a couple of years ago, and it was one of those things where, okay, let's, let's get some stability in which means get fired four straight times in a row, and you're like, all a year or less. And it was like, they're all different reasons. And I, you know, I don't want to go, if you say it's not my fault kind of thing, then you sound like you're the problem. But it was clear, it was like, one we were both that were, you know, yeah, CEO got fired. And we're like, well, that's bad news, we're gone. But another one never used me correctly. At all. You know, there's, there's a myriad of reasons, but it's one of those things. So I'm reminded me when I was feeling shitty about it, they're like, it's like radio, if you're a radio, old school radio host, the more you got fired, the more you went up in marketing is kind of the same thing, like build your rep. You know, Jimmy Kimmel got fired from Tampa radio station here, where we're at? And, you know, yeah, I think he's doing all right. Okay. You know, and so, speak to, if anybody listening that is interested in, you know, hitting you up as a fractional CMO, what it's about, I can tell you, Brett does a good job of being very transparent. Here's the pipeline, here's how many every week here's consistent. You know, you talk about AD D with marketers, but here's the one thing I think you can hone your add number one, we do like spinning plates. But number two, you gotta hold other people's add, because you're coming into a situation. It's always the rebound boyfriend situation you're coming into. Right? Yeah, you're coming into a home that has good,
Eric Readinger 9:08
good home. Yeah. But, you know, down,
Law Smith 9:11
there's a hole that drives us, there's rat problems.
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 9:16
No, and there's an abusive partner. And the reality is, is that it's, you know, it's not you there's two problems, the partner is the problem. And the partner of yours keeps saying, really, you know, that's not the way my ex girlfriend did it. Or that's not the way my ex boyfriend did it. You go well, that's why your ex girlfriend ex boyfriend, isn't there anymore, or market. But you know that people tend to repeat the same behaviors we had. I want to go back to a couple of things law that you said. One of them is, you know, back to the idea of going in house full time as a chief marketing officer. I had an agency a b2b technology marketing agency, which I grew for 13 years, sold it and end of 2018 or Early 2019. And it was a, it was a fun experience. It was a fun process, we had about 25 employees, we had about 230 different clients, and it was a great ride. After that, I decided, you know, I don't want to have the responsibility of payroll of finding the business of doing all these things. So I decided to go in house for a health tech company, as a chief marketing officer that lasted maybe about nine months, was a good three months, it was a little weird for a couple of months. And that was a really bad couple of months. Now, I, there was a lot of drama in that company. And there was a lot of issues and the company is no longer around. But I was the problem, because I didn't admit to myself that I actually make a really shitty employee. I'm a way better fractional person who gets to be an advisor, who's the consigliere, you have the CEO about all things markets, and, and that's my jam, that's where I live. And the more people that I bring in to grow, we've got about 30, you know, amazing people like law now, you know, the more we hear that over and over again, is that, that it feels as a fractional CMO or an interim CMO, or this sort of, you know, outsider helping in, they get a lot more respect and a lot more trust, a lot more authority than then being an actual full time CMO, which I hear myself saying that and I say to myself, that sounds super fucked up. But it is what it is.
Law Smith 11:37
No, it's not, you know, I've been doing it just a little bit now. It's nice. You know, compared to the rest of the roster, you have, I think I'm probably one of the younger if not the youngest in the roster, but I carry a wealth of experience. Know, your hair, and my hair. Yeah. And I show up and are happy hours, pretty sweaty, or doing something in the car, but but the knowledge sharing part that you've made the communities great, I think that's, that's number one, as far as wanting to be in the Grow kind of family. I think tomorrow to your point on that is let's not look at it as like, shiny new object kind of personality, I think it's better to have a couple of clients going on at a time for strategy. Because I think you can, you can go, Oh, we're doing this over here. Okay, let me take some of that from over there, what we're doing, and I'm going to apply it over here. And I think like, that's the advantage of having a fractional CMO or someone that's a consultant or advisor, that's not a full time employee coming in, to look at everything, because they're pulling strategies, oh, I was doing this with this client, you know, from hundreds of clients. And automation is going to be a bigger part of that to where you gotta be on top of that, because marketing's operations now it's not it's, the job is way more if this than that base now. And if you're not kind of on the ball with what's going on with the latest, like trying to use chat GPT a little bit late in the game, and then it sounds like a foreign exchange student is writing your copy. You know, it's it's technically there, but it doesn't really work. I don't
Eric Readinger 13:30
understand why would if when when you enter to GPT why would it be stupid
Law Smith 13:34
or it just doesn't it? It's not? Like if you're like I needed, you can prompt it all day. I'm training.
Eric Readinger 13:41
Time to like train it.
Law Smith 13:43
Yeah, you have to prompt it correctly. You have to learn how to use it. It's not it's not as we we've talked about this.
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 13:49
Yeah, the database guys and say garbage in garbage out. Right. Yeah. So you have to it's, you have to teach it charge GBT. And there's others as well. You have to teach it what your language is. So it starts to predict your language and your style. Are you more authoritative? Are you more helpful? Are you more, you know, asking questions, you know, that kind of thing. But also, you have to be trained, like go look at like, there's there's hundreds of 1000s of probably hundreds of 1000s of YouTube videos now that say, Here's how to write your chat. GPT prompt, right. So they they explain how to write a chat GPT prompt. So you're getting trained, and the system is getting trained, all at the same time.
Law Smith 14:36
Yeah, Eric just dropped an infographic with a cheat sheet on it. Before we got on here a couple hours
Eric Readinger 14:43
uprising ly complex. It's a lot going on on that thing. It's like
Law Smith 14:47
learning a ti 83 Like yeah, you could do some simple stuff on there. But
Speaker 1 14:53
if you want to do cosine, tangent, I love tangents. Refer we feel they asked you a question. We ask everybody that they come on the first time. You're we, you could have jumped in you're
Law Smith 15:08
not unknown or not secure. No,
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 15:11
I get it. I get it. I'm so loving to Boehner that I make people lose track of whatever they got going on. Yes, we get back to
Law Smith 15:17
where we're getting into it. It doesn't matter when when we ask this, what advice would you give your 13 year old self?
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 15:26
Man? That's a great question. I love that. And my son who's 18, we've gone through this conversation quite a bit. And you know, there's a saying, Here's what I would say. And it's based on the saying, do what you love, and you'll never work another day in your life. Right? I forgot who said that. But it's, it's great wisdom. I would, I would change that. And what I would tell my 13 year old self is this. Do what you love, because you're not what you're expected to do. And that's what I've told my side. I grew up, there were expectations. I go through certain levels of school, against certain job, I get married, I have kids, yada, yada, yada. And some of those things I really am glad I did. And other parts of that I really wished I had. had somebody come to me and say, all your passion. Don't do what people expect you to do. Yeah, like that one.
Law Smith 16:20
Yeah. It's one of those things. I was talking to someone this morning about raising kids. And it was like, why don't you have them in T ball want to have your son in T ball yet? Like, he hasn't brought it up? I am pushing him towards things he has an interest in right now. Meaning like, I'm not trying to put a square peg, square peg circle. Yeah,
Eric Readinger 16:42
whatever you can make either one, it could be a round
Law Smith 16:47
holes to set that flip flop. If you like Confucius might be credited for Choose a job you love. You know, never work a day in your life, really. But Ray Bradbury might also have it. This is why chat GPT needs exist to drill down on these things. Because SEO is SEO is just garbage as well. Sounds like Confucius
Eric Readinger 17:07
to me.
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 17:09
Well, and so herein lies another problem with marketing and chat GPT and search. This is why Google is losing the game. So quickly. You go to googling to do a search. The first four things are sponsored, sponsored, sponsored, sponsored. And my number one mission on Google in the last year is go beyond the sponsor. Then there's like two answers that are not sponsored and this sponsor sponsor sponsor. So now you got Bing coming into the game, using chat GPT behind it. And they're rewiring it, and instead of going Google style, which is everything is an ad unless it's you know, this tiny little slit that's not you know, get the full conversation. And, and I think being has a chance to win the you know, there's been a long forgotten tool is now coming back because it's got chat GBT as its search engine.
Law Smith 18:00
Yeah, for the uninitiated, speaking of tangents, no for the allowance of authors. You're no, you're allowed to go on tangents. For the uninitiated, you know, chat GPT is owned by open AI, which got a billion dollars investment from Microsoft 10. Excuse me. Yeah, that's billion with
Eric Readinger 18:22
an with that'd be crazy. Man. Google go down. Well, that'd be you know, it, I hope it seems insurmountable.
Law Smith 18:29
I've talked about it and conspiracy theory way, but not so much like, what 96% of organic search is through Google and YouTube. And they're kind of definitely doing on YouTube kind of cracking down on what they think it's really advertising. Everybody thinks they're just woke. But they might be. But they just want to appeal to advertisers. That's why they d monetize. Oh, sure. A lot of things. But it's so funny. I listen to all these comics, podcasts. And they're all like, get demonetised because I'm not woke. And it's like, no, no, they they want ad money.
Eric Readinger 19:01
Right? They're not doing anything at you. They just are not paying attention to you because you're not doing what they want you to do.
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 19:07
It's a balance. They will add that they don't want to alienate sponsors. And so there's a careful balance there.
Law Smith 19:13
Yeah, but I mean, it's got to make revenue. And people go, Well, what is this like TV? And you're like, yeah, it's a little bit lenient, more lenient. The TV network TV was, but same things. Don't reason they didn't cuss wasn't an effete FCC. Because we wanted to as a nation, it was a thing because advertisers more than anything, then the FCC rule came in anyway. Oh, at the other part of the chat GPT I always have to remind people, it only goes to 2021
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 19:44
on the info, I think that's the free version. The paid version has actually gone up. So we
Law Smith 19:49
talked to the pours out there. Oh, yeah. Cool. Yeah, if you do the I want to
Eric Readinger 19:55
hear about the paid version though. Yeah, tell what does it do?
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 19:59
It And the only thing that I seem to do is that number one, you don't have a limit to what you can you know how many searches you can do or how many prompts you could do. And number two is you don't have to wait for it to be available, which for a while, it was kind of impossible to get in, when other people were and so the paid version just gives you access to I think those two things, and I'm not really sure what else.
Eric Readinger 20:23
Oh, man, what if it was something crazy, like the real the real one?
Law Smith 20:28
Oh, yesterday, even the real one. Yesterday were all kinds of secret shit. Yesterday, we run one of those huddles with everybody on the rosters good showing up on a Monday afternoon. And we're talking about how to talk to CEOs, I found this really interesting. And I think it was in lift in my when I was telling Eric, I go I'll hop in these huddles, I'll say one thing. And then it's an aggregate of every bit thing a bit thinking and that balance. But it's one of those things we're talking about. How do you talk to CEOs? It was really the crux of it. And then it kind of peeled off and a lot of different exits. But you know, one thing, I guess, did we come to a conclusion. I mean, it's one of those things. I think it's style. I
Eric Readinger 21:16
think it's a little note,
Law Smith 21:17
I think it's more psychology? Yeah, I believe most CEOs don't really have a love for marketing. And if they did, you wouldn't probably be sitting there on top. So you kind of in a self selecting marketing haters, that's kind of why you get hired, right? You know, yeah. And I always find I was gonna psychology I go, I looked around and seemed like golf shit on the wall behind them. And then like, explain display ads, or the like sand traps, you know, you get that? And he's like, oh, okay, now I get advertising.
Eric Readinger 21:52
And you're like, you're a genius.
Law Smith 21:55
It taught me I'm no Kaiser. So say, but that's kind of what I was applying. What Kaiser says,
Eric Readinger 22:03
Yep, I was definitely paying attention. What were you saying?
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 22:07
Well, as you know, it's interesting. I was actually on a call the other day with a client. And they're, it's a healthcare technology company, again, that and Internet Security sort of is my, my, my areas of expertise and marketing. And I was talking to the whole company, and we were talking about this new campaign, and we're getting ready to roll out. And one of the chief medical officers, the other CMO, you know, was wrote up this really detailed thing, and I said, you know, that's great, but we need to dumb it down to where a CEO can understand it. And the CEO who was on the call of the company, he's like, Wait, whoa, you know, chill out. Listen, was he exactly, he was like, taking offense, he was like, you know, all butthurt or whatever. And, and I said, Look, you know, you have 40 things going on. Marketing is one of 20 things. And this campaign is one of 40 5060 things. So we're not short, sweet, to the point. And simple. We're losing. As we go, I guess I got that I was
Law Smith 23:15
bored. Yeah, you got a backhanded compliment. Say, you're right.
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 23:21
A real CEO. But he got it after he got so offended by my comment. And I think other people got it. But, you know, it's the idea that it's not that you have to dumb it down to see a level. But you have to make it very simple, very bite sized, for a CEO to get it. And that's something that we as marketers tend to fail at, which is speaking about marketing, in the CEO language, not in marketing language. Yeah. So you know, and then and then what happens is, as marketers, we start to think, in terms of financial ROI was to look off cost of ownership, and what's the X? You know, what's the multiples on the spin that we're gonna get? And that's good, but that's talking CFO, talking, EO and talking investors is what's our growth trajectory going to look like? What is our total customer in a total Latino customer lifetime value going to look like? These are things of a CEO focuses on these are terms and so we need to start instead of saying ICP, which we as marketers know, stands for is a
Eric Readinger 24:33
Clown Posse.
Law Smith 24:36
Saying Clown Posse
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 24:38
Yeah, there you go. Your ice racing.
Law Smith 24:42
No, I saw you got to say it. I have to say it this way. But but you
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 24:47
know, so like, nobody like like, first of all, like, you know, one of the things that Elon Musk did when he got to Tesla and SpaceX, one of those he said, you know, you know, fuck the three letter acronyms right? We need to stop with that. And so when we start talking about Customers prospects. And we talk almost in a in a sales language slant CEOs tend to get that. Now, there's four kinds of CEOs that are out there. And one of them is a marketing oriented CEO. But that's probably about 2% of the CEOs, they're out there. They are rare. They're fucking awesome. But the rest are product driven, or technology driven CEOs, right? So in the technology world is that founder slash CEO that grows a company to a couple 100 employees, you've also got the sales driven CEO that really knows how to, you know, when business whether the product, or the service is good, or just sucks, you know, grandma's balls, and then you got, you know, the third type, which is the operations oriented CEO that's really about the metrics and more CFO operating. And so, one of the things that I'm putting together and working on to share with, you know, the collective with team, you know, that was talking about that is, is, you know, how do we identify the type of CEO? And then how do we create a language that that CEO understands, based on where they came from? Because we all want the CEO, that's marketing. But like I said, it's only 2% of CEOs rise up through the marketing ranks.
Eric Readinger 26:26
I love that. How do you do it without them finding out you're doing it?
Law Smith 26:32
Crystal Chrome extension for LinkedIn like, yeah,
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 26:36
exactly. Crystal knows, Crystal knows. SBI Exactly. Like, how do you get it to work like you did with a kid that's like, you know, six years old or less that you can jujitsu them pretty easily, versus when the kid gets older? It's a good question. It's not about what you're trying to do to them. It's about relating to them, and connected and understanding their love language, what is their language, what is the way they think the way that they speak? Because we as marketers, aren't great at, you know, we know how to do the profile, the personas are the same clan policies, we also know how to, you know, write things up that are going to really make an impact and create campaigns and build demand gen programs. But we're not, except for a small few of us. Very good at getting by and explaining it to the CEO in their language. And then also, in a lot of cases, taking it to the board level and talking to it to the board of directors, which is a whole different language. There. You're talking to a kindergartener. You know, you're talking to someone that needs, you know, less than five words per sentence, not because they're dumb, they're usually incredibly smart. But their focus on a company is miniscule. versus their focus on all these other things. What
Law Smith 28:00
what do you do when the CEOs a bit P whipped in getting ideas from the missus?
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 28:09
God I,
Law Smith 28:10
because this, this happens more than you would imagine.
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 28:15
And you have a story that GA,
Law Smith 28:17
so I have kind of a overall amalgam kind of story, you know, they'll come to you and tell you, hey, we need to have a presence on Facebook or something. And you're like, okay, and in my head, I go, Okay, you think that because I know you don't have an account? Because I'll look up the CEO, this guy, see what they're about, if I'm working for him. You gotta gotta just like you're talking about you got to know how to communicate. You know, if if they love YETI Coolers, we're going to talk YETI Coolers to him like, uh, yeah. But like, you know, find that common ground and just do a little stalking after I do the bumble girl stalking, you know, my matches on there. So
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 29:03
that's so that that's social selling, right? I mean, that's, you know, by the way,
Law Smith 29:10
the whole thing is like, they're telling you about Facebook, you need to have a presence there. And you're like, that's not, you're a b2b product. I don't think this is a good platform. And it skews older. Although it does secretly have a lot of younger people on there, because it's the pastor for Instagram, but you don't go on there as a CEO. You're not going on there. So who's telling you this? Because he ain't gonna be your kids. Because Facebook to kids right now is like hooking
Eric Readinger 29:41
up the retirement home of social media. No, it's
Law Smith 29:44
like hooking up with an algo everybody's done it, but no one's gonna brag about it. No one's gonna talk about it. So kids are not like, yeah, my Facebook is, you know, check this out. They brag about Tiktok and Instagram. So it's usually the wife get feeding this idea that We need to do this without any kind of research or thinking at all, but they use it. That's their, the end user of it for for other things.
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 30:09
Yeah, and I get that a lot. And, you know, maybe not in the exact way that we're talking about it here. But what I get as this, you know, what, give an example of, you know, working with a client and building a present sales presentation, and they're going from their very factual, you know, features based presentation, and try to turn it into a story, right storytelling presentation to really get people engaged. And then work with the CEO than working with the CRO, the chief revenue officer, I've been working with a couple other people, some salespeople, really working in honing it and getting great buy in. And then a couple of days later, we're getting ready to send it off to the designers and see you guys, you know, I presented it to my wife.
Law Smith 30:55
I'm sure he did it with the gusto that right.
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 30:59
And, and, you know, and you know, and, by the way, my wife is a very smart person
Law Smith 31:09
you know, stories out about her.
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 31:13
Okay, it's an enterprise sales company, and therefore, like, Is your wife involved in enterprise sales? No, you know, she's, but she truly knows how to run the house, you know? So it's like, you know, it's kind of things where it's other parties are involved. And I think it's not just about like, a spouse, you know, a wife or husband of a CEO that has this great idea. I think it's trust healed. I think that's one of the things we have to build that you said, Trust and think it's a circle of trust. And I have learned over the years, that what I have to do is establish who's inside the circle? And who's outside the circle of trust Fokker. Right. And, and, and if we agree on who's inside the circle of trust, then anybody outside the circle that trusts their opinion, although interesting, is irrelevant.
Law Smith 32:09
Right? Yeah. And
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 32:11
I, and I try to use that line as often as possible when people are outside the circle of trust. And, you know, sometimes it's offensive. And that's okay. I don't mind being offensive. And sometimes it's like, oh, yeah, you know what, you're right. That is not somebody that we agreed as a part of this, you know, plan the story, building this strategy, you know, all of this stuff.
Eric Readinger 32:32
Thrill offensive when you get the chalk out, and you draw the circle around you, and you exclude certain people. Aggressive, unnecessary, I
Law Smith 32:40
think, but that's me, we would call that aggressive, passive, aggressive, aggressive, aggressive. You know, what, when they come to you with a bad idea, like just a horrendous garbage dumpster fire, like a seafood restaurant dumpster fire, like real stinky? How do you handle that? Because this, you have to kind of turn into your own PR person, in a way. Yeah, you got to spend this in like, Okay. I know, trying to like play K and just get closer to being honest. I don't think that's a spectrum. That's fine. I mean, you're gonna get there anyway. I don't want to waste anybody's time. That's how I go about it. I'll tell them that. But it'll be like, I don't think this is a good idea. And that's kind of why you have to, because otherwise, you would just do carry on. Don't do it. Yeah.
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 33:31
Yeah. And, you know, sometimes people want to cut you. And you have to, you have to be you have to stroke people's egos, especially if they're the ones writing the checks to pay for you. And they say they want you to be direct and be honest with them. What they really want you to do is, you know, stroke their hair and tell them how pretty they are. And so, you know, I've learned that one of the things to do when there's a harebrained I call it the random acts of marketing. Yep. Yeah,
Law Smith 34:01
you got the flow. I want to play with my hair.
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 34:04
Yeah, I'm trying so that we can actually just ever touch her and tell me how wonderful I am. And so, you know, there is a art and a science to stroking people's egos and turning them away to bad ideas. And it's, you have to know, you know, I do feel like half the time I'm going to Sopranos episode. Okay. And I'm the Constabulary. And my customer is Tony. You could get whacked at anytime times. I was causing successfully doesn't Greg Yeah, cuz,
Law Smith 34:41
because I've been that. Somebody's been that guy. Everybody's every
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 34:47
last week. I love it. He was brought in. He's like, he's the guy that had like, let like 100 People go on. Yeah. And then later, he's telling the Swedes he's like, you know, people think I'm good at it because I heard tend like I care, but I don't really care.
Law Smith 35:03
backstabber he's like well, no, not for you. I wouldn't be.
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 35:07
So I would say maybe less cousin Greg, because President Greg does not exude authority. But more like, you know, personally are some of the guys in the sopranos, where I always feel like I'm in a bit of a Sopranos episode. And you've got, Tony, that always has a great idea, you got Carmela, right. It's either bringing in some ideas or bringing in some rage, you know, and either one can be a very powerful tool to train Tony the CEO. But then you've also got your allies, and sometimes your allies, your enemies, and sometimes your enemies, your allies, within the same family. And so when I hear an idea, I don't deflect it, I don't turn it away. I say that's interesting. I wonder if we should go talk to so and so. Who would probably saying that's a dumb fucking idea. And usually, this is where a chief revenue officer can come into play. Or a VP of marketing, or sorry, VP of sales, that could be your ally, or a CFO, or whoever the technology leader is, but and then and then there's some jujitsu behind it, which is, how do you frame the question of getting people's opinion? And so therefore, you don't look like the asshole. You look like the fact finder?
Eric Readinger 36:22
Yeah, you do like a special sign be like just stroke my nose? No, do not like it. Am I
Law Smith 36:30
running home? What is
Eric Readinger 36:33
your nose, your nose? We'll have to have you
Law Smith 36:35
back on. We tried to keep these to about 33 minutes, because we heard that's the optimal business podcast time. But we'll have you back on because I know we chop it up on those huddles and in fractional cmo happy hours that hopefully you'll be a part of, you know, you don't drink anymore. So
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 36:55
no, I'm sorry,
Eric Readinger 36:56
I'll put this away. Please. Drink one form and drink that whole bottle for him.
Law Smith 37:00
I know he'll be a degenerate just not with us. But in those choice,
Eric Readinger 37:05
court mandated or anything. You didn't have
Law Smith 37:09
that car with the DUI blow in it for a while to turn it
Eric Readinger 37:13
off and crank. You highly recommended
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 37:17
by the judge. You can
Law Smith 37:19
you can edit this last part out but we'll have you back. We'll have you back on at some point and I'll see you when I see you.
Brett Schklar, CEO of Grow Powerful, a B2B Fractional CMO agency focused on growth - growpowerful.io 37:27
Sounds good. All right. Thank you gentlemen.
